Malcolm Dean wrote a terrific obituary of Michael Young, the most remarkable social reformer of the late 20th century.

There was a nice profile of Susan Sontag in last Saturday’s Guardian, which quotes a magnificent sneering attack on her by Scott McLemee in his Washington Post review of her latest book.

“Her manner now is virtually indistinguishable from that of George Steiner in his lugubrious moments as Last Intellectual, striking that solemn pose as embodiment of high seriousness – perched atop the Nintendo ruins of western civilization”.

“Software that can detect when people are lying in their e-mails sounds a bit far-fetched, but its manufacturers declare it is true.” Oh yeah! The FT is reporting that “SAS Institute, which makes fraud-detection systems for banks and phone companies, will on Monday announce a product that can sift through e-mails and other electronic text to catch elusive nuances such as tone.”

Useful piece reassessing online advertising.

“Until now most ads were evaluated by the number of click-throughs, but the Interactive Advertising Bureau (I.A.B.) has thought of ways to change that. It announced the creation of the Ad Campaign Measurement and Audit Guidelines to help bring uniformity to online advertising. Consultants from PricewaterhouseCoopers developed the guidelines for the I.A.B., and encourage the measurement of Internet branding through a combination of ad impressions, clicks, page impressions, total visits and unique visits…”